The coolest thing we take for granted: “You had to be there” is not what it used to be.

July 31, 2014

Great tune. Too bad I wasn’t there. Or am I?

I’m reading Bill Flannigan’s book, U2: At the End of the World, about the band’s epic Zoo TV tour in the early nineties. The book is equal parts fascinating and cloying (like the band!) but one thing is certain the dude was there for all of it: back stage, in the vans, on the plane, in the pubs, at the hotels and, most importantly at the concerts.

And now because of the miracle of Internet, so am I. I can find high quality footage for any number of these amazing U2 shows online. I know we take it for granted that anything and everything is now available to us if we have a computer; hell, even a phone.

But back when Flannigan wrote this book, and U2 did those concerts, none of that was true. One could only imagine how cool the stage was and how bombastic the band. Flannigan’s words could only do so much. In the end, we are left with that great old saying: You had to be there.

Not anymore. Not now. Now I can literally find the very concerts he was writing about, and watch them. In Sydney. In Dublin. In my hometown of Chicago. All those big, fantastic shows I/we could only read about are right here right now.

I am able to do the same thing for Guns and Roses, upon reading Slash’s recent memoir. Or Keith Richard’s. The idea of being able to read about a specific event and then find that event online and watch it is, to me, one of the coolest things about the Internet.

See and hear what he’s talking about…

I was so captivated by this notion, I took my entire third novel, Sweet by Design and committed it to a blog and gave virtually every reference in it a link to some relevant piece of content. A character goes to Water Tower Place to get a blow job (read the book) I provided a link to Water Tower Place. Every restaurant, town, street or landmark I gave a link. The reader could click on the word and see for himself what the character was seeing. (It takes me a couple hours or more to produce a single blog post. You do the math on a novel.) I even crowd sourced the cover, should it ever get published in -egads- paper. Check out the winner. It’s a pretty sweet design.

Did I expect people to actually check the links? Maybe a little, here and there. Honestly, I didn’t expect very many people would even read the damn book! But I did it anyway. It took hours every night and many months. I didn’t care. That’s how much I loved the idea.

I still love the idea. It still blows me away. A kid reads about the JFK assassination and she can watch the Zapruder film. And countless other related pieces. That’s amazing kids.

Brutal… but available.

Many of you can’t relate, I know. But I’m old enough to remember when none of this was possible. To support a lecture, professors told students to read this book or rent that movie. And a lot of times there was no supporting content, or if it did exist you had no way of accessing it. It wasn’t free. It wasn’t for you. Try and imagine that. Can you even? Oh well, I guess you had to be there.

I hated going to brick-and-mortar classes during my undergrad days because teachers would tell me to get this boring book and read it. That’s why I’m liking my online coursework for my MBA – they provide links to content that is pertinent to the class. I’m glad your book is paying off, and I think your idea is a great one – it works for Wikipedia, doesn’t it?